Page:Constitutional Charter of the Kingdom of Poland, In the Year 1815.pdf/53



The budget was never discussed in the state council; it was formed from year to year on the representation of the minister finance.

Such are the principal violations of the Charter, for it would be impossible to enumerate them all. The Poles have employed all lawful means afforded them by the Charter to obtain redress; memorials, petitions, nothing has been omitted, and these measures have been repeated at every diet; and only when a disdainful silence, and a persevering continuance in despositismdespotism [sic] convinced them that these means were unavailing, have they had recourse to insurrection.

Let us now examine the stipulations, in the public treaties of Europe, referring as well to that part of Poland which was to be governed by the constitution, as to the provinces now swallowed up in the Russian Empire; the re-establishment of the latter being one of the objects proposed by the Polish insurrection. By the second article of the treaty of Reichenbach, concluded between Russia, Austria, and Prussia, on the 27th of June, 1813, it was stipulated that the duchy of Warsaw should be dissolved, and that “the provinces of which it consisted should be divided amongst Austria, Russia, and Prussia, in such parts as should afterwards be agreed upon between the three powers, without the intervention of the French government;” subsequently in the treaty of Toplitz, bearing date the 9th of September, the word partition was omitted, and the first and fourth articles refer to an amicable arrangement between the three powers Russia, Austria, and Prussia, as to the future fate of the duchy of Warsaw. Both